8 Great Ways to Create Blog Posts

Blogging is one of the most successful channels to reach your target audience. It helps to drive traffic and convert leads. Moreover, it establishes you as an authority in your niche and opens new paths to earn more clients.

The below graph from Hubspot displays a comparison of leads (From Month 1 to Month 12) generated through blogging alone:

Source: Hubspot

Here are 8 great ways that will help you create blog posts that provide the highest ROI:

 

1- Identify Your Blogging Goals

Every task that you do in life has a goal. Blogging is no different.

Ask yourself, what do you want to achieve through blogging? Here are a few questions that might help:

• What are the keywords on which I wish to rank?
• Do I need a sale from the blog post?
• What will the reader do after they finish reading the post?
• Am I looking to increase organic traffic to my site?
• Am I looking to achieve branding?
• Do I want the readers to share the content across social media?

Image Source

It is extremely necessary to figure out what exactly you wish to achieve from blogging. It can be traffic, branding, leads, or conversions. A successful blogger is one who is aware of the destination he/she wishes to reach.

 

2- Create a Target Reader Persona

Once you are confident about your primary and secondary blogging goals then it’s time to create the target reader persona.

Here are some ways to identify and create your target audience persona:

• Research your customer and collect demographic information like gender, age, professional group, income, location, marital status, education level, etc.
• Identify how they like to access information — mobile device, laptop, etc.
• How often are they exposed to relevant content during the day?
• What is the ideal time to send emails to them?
• How do they make decisions?
• What’s important for them in their life?
• What form of action do they take on content they enjoy?
• What are the pain points of your ideal reader?
• How can you help the reader to reduce the pain points and make him/her a potential customer?

 

3- Use Different Blogging Templates Based on The Target Reader Persona

It is better to have different blogging templates based on your target reader persona and his/her likes and dislikes.

For example, a person interested in traveling should be targeted with a travel blogging theme instead of a fashion driven theme. A person will willingly spend more time reading the blog if he/she loves the blog theme.

 

4- Follow Your Competitors and Copy What Worked For Them

When it comes to identifying blogging competitors, I look no further than BuzzSumo. Whether it’s analyzing top performing content or finding key influencers to promote the content, BuzzSumo is an awesome tool that helps me to quickly identify which content is working well in a particular industry.

You simply need to enter your content topic and BuzzSumo will display the most shared content. Moreover, you can filter the content by date, language, country, domain type, and content type. You can also see the most trending content and the top influencers of a particular niche.

Now you can start creating blog posts that are better than your competitors.

 

5- Have Incredibly Catchy Blog Titles

Titles have the power to attract an audience. Remember, your audience will not read the content if you are unable to seduce them with an amazing title.

Here are some effective ways to prepare excellent blog titles:

• Use strong language like “X Things That Work”, “The Foolproof guide to..” etc.
• Solve reader pain points in the title itself. A title like “7 Ways To Remove Viruses From Your Laptop Right Now” instantly helps the reader who is looking for a resource to get rid of a virus.
• Mention the value that the reader will get after reading the blog post. For example, you can use titles like “X Smart Ways to Reduces Pimples in 24 Hours”, “Proven Strategies That Helped to Increase My Site Traffic by 22%”, etc.

• Keep it visual. Use words like “Infographic”, “Photos”, “Videos” etc in the title itself. Hubspot suggests that titles having the word “photos” in them performed 37% better than headlines without this word.
• Use powerful adjective words like “Easy”, “Tasty”, “Efficient”, “Crazy”, “Beautifully” etc. as this helps the title to become more appealing.
• Use strong action verbs like “Discover”, “Generate”, “Grow”, “Promote” etc in order to persuade the reader to read more.
• You can also make use of title generators to create great content titles within seconds.

 

6- Plan An Outline Of Your Content Before Writing The Post

It is crucial to outline your blog post before you actually piece it all together. This helps to identify the important sections in your piece so that you can elaborate them in the best possible way.

Here are some tips that will help:

• Create sub-points for your main headline and write down the main lessons that you wish to include under those sub-points.
• List the references needed to complete the entire article.
• Do not forget the SEO element of your content piece. You should have your target keyword phrase in the URL, Title, Description, Body Text and Image Alt Text.

• Search for images that can accompany well with each of the sub-points.
• Organize the sub points into a structure that makes sense.
• Add relevant content to expand the sub points in an actionable manner.
• Add proper conclusion and keep it open ended to allow user comments.

 

7- Take Influencer Round-Ups

Influencer marketing is on a boom and we cannot leave this important medium of marketing when it comes to creating eminent blog posts.

Once you have identified your key influencers in step 4 above, it’s time to create a roundup blog post with a strong headline.

Here are 4 formulas from Social Media Examiner that are extremely useful in creating influencer round-up blog posts:

• X Most Popular [TOPIC] Posts From the Pros in [MONTH/YEAR]
• X Most Popular [TOPIC] Posts From [JOB TITLE] in [MONTH/YEAR]
• X Most Popular [TOPIC] Posts That Will [DESIRED RESULT]
• X Most Popular [TOPIC] Posts That Will [DESIRED RESULT] in [DESIRED TIME]

After you have created and published the blog post, share it across social profiles and mention the influencers in your tweets. Reach out to the influencers by emailing them and ask them to share your content with their audiences. This will give your content even more exposure than before.

 

8- Use CTA’s Creatively and Scientifically

Last but not least, you need to have CTA’s in your blog post and, most importantly, have them in the right areas.

The CTA should be created based upon what action you want the reader to take. Here are some examples of CTA’s that works well for most blogs:

• Add CTA in between and at the bottom of the content. This way you will increase your chances of conversion. But remember, CTA’s should not hamper the reading experience of the user.
• Tweet CTA’s using services like ClicktoTweet. These tend to do well for brands who are looking to expand their social reach. Here is an example of ClicktoTweet used in the CoSchedule blog:

• With the help of the heatmap, identify areas where your audience has the maximum attention and add a CTA on that exact position.
• Sidebar CTA’s are the most popular CTA type and you can use it to gain blog subscribers or to get other user information like their phone number.

Blogging is a great way to generate a constant flow of new customers to your business. The above points will surely help you to create blog posts that are loved by the readers.

Do you have any ideas that you have used in your blog in order to generate more engagement and traffic? Please let me know in the comments below.